


To us all

by Sombraline



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, I wrote this for myself but you can read it if you want, M/M, Not everyone is in the tags but everyone is in the fic, Nothing relevant happens in this story its just pure fluff, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 12:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18778591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sombraline/pseuds/Sombraline
Summary: Tony Stark was fifty-four when he died.He was also fifty-four when he was revived. Which, thanks for nothing. If you were going to bring somebody back to life, you could at least make them young and healthy in the process. It wasn't like that would have been the weird part.





	To us all

**Author's Note:**

> This story is pure self-indulgence. There's no plot. Nothing relevant happens at any point in the story. I even decided I didn't care enough to make either Frostiron or Pepperony come out on top, and that's something. I just needed this.

Tony Stark was fifty-four when he died.

He was also fifty-four when he was revived. Which, thanks for nothing. If you were going to bring somebody back to life, you could at least make them young and healthy in the process. It wasn't like that would have been the weird part.

On the moment of his death, snapping one cosmic mechanism of ultimate power and bad choices inspiration, Anthony Edward Stark was... Very tired. Moreso than over fifty years of life, no matter how busy, should have made him. But, well. Living five years of his life with a hole the size of an orange in his chest. Choking on palladium laced blood and a liver scarred by years of alcohol abuse. Also, constant anxiety and trauma, that was something too. He had earned the gray hair on his temple a dozen times if only in his twenty-three days of slowly starving in space.

Yeah. He had been exhausted, when he had used the gauntlet, and yet he had done it without hesitation. There was no time to doubt, no time to fear. The universe shuddered and held its breath, and Tony Stark had the power to fix everything.

He did.

“You can rest now. We'll be okay,” Pepper said. She had tears in her strong eyes and her voice was unusually soft. Behind her, the kid was shaking his head _no_. They were both okay. Everyone was okay.

He let go. And he died.

 

 

 

And he opened his eyes.

And knew immediately that the afterlife didn't have neons tubes with the slightly blue-ish glow that indicated that they were arc-reactor powered.

Everything hurt, too. That was another sign that he was totally alive. He didn't want to accept the thought that death didn't cure throat aches and joint pains and whatever the  _heck_ was burning in his left arm like somebody had dipped his nerves in pili-pili.

He closed his eyes, pained by the brightness of the light. That was odd, his first thought was. He had been sure he was gone.

He didn't know how he felt about that. Mostly tired, right now. Tired, and wanting to rest, for once in his life. Tired, and at peace.

He let darkness engulf him again.

And he opened his eyes.

He had turned on his side at some point. His left arm was stretched straight on the mattress, and he stared at it. It felt unpleasantly tingly. Also, his skin was ash-gray. Not dirty, not oddly painted by the ambient light. Gray.

He tentatively folded his fingers. Waves of little electrical stings climbed up his arm. He managed to form a fist, though.

Uh.

“Mr. Stark? Can you hear me?” Asked a voice, deep and polite and British, from some unknown direction.

“Why couldn't I hear you, J'?” He mumbled.

“I'm just glad you do,” said Jarvis, with something like an audible smile, some gentle amusement that usually showed on Vision's face like he was still unsure or maybe a little shy about the human expression.

Wait.

He forced himself to roll on his back. It took more strenght than he had expected, but he barely paid any attention.

It wasn't Jarvis' voice in the ceiling. It was Vision, sitting in a ridiculous plastic chair, like he couldn't have bothered to push Tony's clothes off the comfortable seat where it sat. Which was dumb. Vision hadn't ever been in Tony's bedroom, as far as he knew, but he didn't have to be weirdly shy. He had all of Jarvis' memories in him, afterall.

His train of thoughts was not aimed at the right direction, he thought confusedly.

“Weren't you dead?” He asked.

“Yes,” Vision said.

Tony blinked a few times.

“Wasn't I dead?”

“Also yes.”

“This feels very alive.”

“Our friends are stubborn people, it seems.”

Their friends.

“I think,” Tony said, and wow, he was talking. Also a sign of being alive, right? “I think I need some more sleep.”

“That seems fair, Mr. Stark.”

“Are you just going to stay there?”

“I can leave, if you would prefer?”

“No, I -uh, I don't think I would prefer that. It's okay, I mean. You can stay.”

Vision simply nodded, in matter of an answer. Tony looked at him for a few longer seconds before he rolled on his back again, nursing his left arm and its confusing signals against his chest. Sleep came more slowly, this time.

When he woke up again, the room was dark. Also, his arm felt like he had slept on it; slightly numb, not in pain. He rubbed at his tired eyes and straightened up, feeling a little stronger now than he had before. That's when he realised he was wearing honest to god pajamas. Not, like, a tank top and sweat pants. Like, stripped blue and white, first year of Hogwarts Harry Potter pajamas, with a buttonned front.

“Whose clothes are _that_?” He asked out loud. 

“They were brought by Nick Fury. I would suppose they are yours, now.”

“I really don't want them. Wait -Vision?”

It wasn't Vision. When Tony turned back, instead of a flashy fuschia skinned android sat no one other than Loki, freaking  _Loki_ , Tesseract stealing brother murdering Loki. He was wearing less metal than usual, in what resembled godly interior clothes, and seemed pretty harmless, sitting there with his legs slightly folded and a book in his lap and looking at Tony with critical attention.

“If you have me confused with your technological son, Anthony, I'm afraid this resurrection experiment went worse than I could have feared.”

“Resurrection,” Tony repeated. “Loki.”

“So you do recognise me.”

“What the hell is going on?”

Loki was silent, at that. His lover -thought gone and dead and lost- just looked at him, seemingly unchanged. Except -no. He was different.

He was smiling. Fondly, in that way that called him stupid without saying a word. He was smiling, and it was a smile without a worry in the world.

“We won, Tony.”

“Thanos...”

“You killed him. The Mad Titan is dead. You did it.”

“I felt myself dying.”

“So did I. And yet we are surrounded by obstinated fools.”

“We're... You and I and Vision -we really are alive? We're -back?”

“Like we never left,” Loki confirmed, with a voice soft like he had rarely heard it. “One has to wonder how ethical it is, to bring a dead man back to life, but it seems they were not enclined to question it. Necromancy has always been a deadly sin in Asgard, and yet it is Thor who wielded the gauntlet for that final action. To bring all of us back.”

“Well, shit.”

Loki gave a little twist of a smile. Clearly he had had more time than Tony to accept the impossible news. He had been gone all this time, and he was just there. Smiling. Like he had never left.

“I have a daughter,” he said, because Loki needed to hear it from him before it was too late.

“I heard,” Loki said, startling him by keeping the same look on his face. “Morgan Stark. A name worthy of a mighty witch, and a child worthy of her name.”

“You -wait, you met her?”

“You have been sleeping for a few days, and there was no hiding from her. She is as stubborn as her father is, and as persuaded that everybody loves her. And, as you are, she is correct in that assumption.”

He kept his legs crossed as he spoke, closing his book and finally putting it away to better fold his hands on his lap and look at Tony patiently.

“...Is this some -some bad trip or afterlife thing? I don't -you're not supposed to be just so chill.”

“Again, I had a few days to face the facts before you woke. And... Much things to put into perspective,” Loki added after a pause. “My brother was nearly destroyed by the glove. You were in fact killed by it. And I...” He stopped again, and something somber in his light green eyes reassured Tony, without him being able to tell why, that this truly was Loki. “I was dead,” he finished, “for five years. Truly, definitely dead. It feels like being petty and jealous has lost some of its appeal.”

Tony nodded, although he knew he wasn't even beginning to reach Loki's reflexions. He still felt tired, and -yeah, things were still going to need some perspective. But he understood enough to retain the essential.

“All of us -we're alive,” he repeated.

“All of us,” said Loki.

“Pepper?”

“She is well.”

“Rhodey?”

“He, too.”

“Cap?”

“Yes.”

“Nat?”

“I never knew before this day this woman could smile. But she does. More than anyone.”

He slowly lied back down into his pillows, his chest feeling heavy and his head light. He looked at the neons at the ceiling and found himself smiling.

“We won,” he echoed Loki's words.

“We did,” the trickster said quietly. “You did. And everyone is waiting for you out there.”

Tony laughed, and wiped the tears that had made it out of his eyes.

 

It turned out that, when Loki said  _everyone_ ... He meant everyone.

When he made it out of his bedroom, it was to find that the house was at its absolute maximum capacity. Every single one of the Avengers was there -and then some. It would be sometime before he would learn that Loki's witchcraft had kept the noise out of his room, and he seriously wondered how he had not been alarmed that his quiet little house had been turned into a summer camp.

He meant that pretty much literally.

Sleeping bags were rolled and half discarded all around the living room. The coffee table had been pushed against the wall and was covered in backpacks and sheated weapons. On the freed space, a raging game of Uno was abandoned where it sat as Hulk and his game partners (the alien who didn't get metaphors, the alien with little antennaes, Maria Hill and a sentient pile of rocks) saw Tony. Loki carefully stepped aside as the big guy gave Tony a surprisingly gentle hug.

“You crazy little man,” Bruce said, holding tight to him.

“Is that you or the big guy talking? 'Cause it's kinda offensive, either way,” Tony managed.

There was absolutely no time to answer after that, because Drax proclaimed out loud to an unknown audience that, Behold! The Man of Iron has awakened. And Bruce just stood aside with the biggest grin on his big face, apparently knowing something that Tony had yet to find out.

“Now, now!” Called a commanding voice from the kitchen - _his_ kitchen, thank you very much-, “let's go one at the time, people, please, we talked about this -Tony isn't going anywhere.”

Tony had just the time to recognise Dr. Helen Cho and to think,  _hey, wasn't she snapped_ ? before Loki gave a small sigh of “Oh, here we go” and gently tapped at his shoulder before walking away. Considering how reluctant he was to PDA, Tony worried.

Except, really, what came after wasn't exactly fear inducing. Oh, no. He knew what fear was. This was its exact opposite.

Cho came toward him, smiling brightly, and gently led him to his favorite chair. She asked him if he wanted some tea and how his arm was feeling, and he agreed to a tall glass of water and an explanation as to how he still had an arm. She actually laughed at that.

“That was a lot of work, and a lot of things to explain. I think it will be better to speak later, when everyone has gotten a chance to say hi.”

The card players had cleared the living room. The floor was gently creaking upstairs, implying that there were people there, and the outside lights were on, implying the same about either the jacuzzi or the picnic table. More voices came from the kitchen, mostly, where Hulk and the others had disappeared.

“Where's Morgan?” He asked.

“Being distracted,” Cho answered. “I'll get her.”

She left for the courtyard. As she opened the door, more voices came in: shouting, laughing. It sounded like children playing, like a park on a sunny afternoon, except it was his home and apparently not long after supper. He sipped his glass of water, still a little lost, but quickly regaining attention as anticipation climbed. And before long, he heard Cho laughing, and little feet running on the gravel, and then on the porch, and then through the door, and-

“DADDY!”

Tony fell from the chair to his knees, and opened his arms just, just in time to have them filled by the little speeding cannonball that was his daughter. She had been at the back of his mind like an unreal thought, and now -now she was  _there_ , hair smelling like her Star Wars Rey-themed berries shampoo and little hands wrapping around his neck and her favorite red skirt-

“Hey, baby,” he found himself saying, way softer than he meant to, and he cleared his throat, except tears made it up to his eyes by the time he managed again, “Hey.”

“Are you feeling better?” Morgan had her face in his shoulder, voice muffled, but there, there she was, talking, and Tony's smile grew so big it was -painful.

“Yeah, baby, I'm feeling great. How -how are you? What have you been doing while I was asleep?”

He gently pulled her away from his chest, to look at her face. She had dirt on her right cheek and her hair had mostly slipped out of a too loose, clumsy braid. God, it was time he came back, he thought and grinned. Oh, no, no. He had done enough resting, Pepper. And now he deserved not to.

“I showed everyone the house,” she replied, “and also I made drawings with Peter, and now I play with Cooper and his dad and the cat outside.”

“Who's Cooper? No, wait, Peter is here? Wait, _what_ cat? You gotta slow down, are you _trying_ to confuse your old father? You're making this up. Also, just who did your hair today, Dumm-E? You look like you crawled under the house.”

He picked her up as he spoke, to sit back into the chair and pull her into his lap. She grinned and happily settled down there as he automatically started undoing her messy braid to make a decent one.

“It was Harley,” she answered, evidently very pleased to place the blame. “He's not really good.”

“I can _see_ that. What do you want? French braid? Fish braid? Lord of the Rings braid?”

“Tiger braid!”

“Is that a thing? Oh, I _see_. I'll make it a thing.”

Morgan just laughed, also evidently proud to have issued a challenge. She didn't know, Tony though. She was so young; she didn't know what death was.

And she didn't have to. No matter what -no matter all the questions he still had and the possible unethical worries Loki had mentioned and everything- no matter all that, Morgan didn't have to know. Not today. She was just laughing and getting her braid done and explaining proudly that she had allowed some of her new friends to share her bedroom.

His hands were a little shaky. His left hand was pale, sickly pale, but it was back to a normal color. He could manage a freaking braid.

“Aunt Carol is staying with me and also Mr. Scott and Cassie. Mr. Scott said he could make himself very small to sleep on my table but then he didn't, so he sleeps on the floor, and I share my bed with Cassie. She's really cool, she even has dots on her nails and she can do a cartwheel. Can you do cartwheels, Dad? She could probably show you.”

“Cartwheels? That's some serious business. So who else is staying with us?”

“There's Mrs. Valkyrie that slept into my room last night too, because she said Mr. Loki snores. Also Mr. Loki is in the backyard with Mr. Thor and Mr. Korg and Mr. Heimdall and Mr. Heimdall is really _really_ cool. His eyes glow in the dark!”

Yeah. Everyone, Loki had said. Everyone it was. And Tony tried not to wonder, but he failed, because his brain was always a few steps ahead, if they really had piled up just to wait for his waking up.

Cassie explained remarkably well. She explained that Harley and Peter slept in the living room and that Uncle Hulk (yep) had made himself comfortable in the workshop. The Asgardians were chilling under the stars, as Asgardians did. Steve, Bucky and Sam shared the guest rooms in the attic with Quill and Drax and Wanda and the Vision (whom Morgan absolutely loved because he had a really cool color and he could make toasters work with just his mind). Pepper had welcomed Aunt May and Maria Hill in their own bedroom, with Tony resting in the solarium turned infirmary with Helen Cho's foldable bed in the corner of the room.

_And_ Scott Lang and his daughter were bunking in their van (it made  _music_ , Morgan pointed out) with their volubile friend Luis sleeping in a hammock between the trees. And Happy had just folded out his couch in the basement and was sharing it with a guy named Wong. And Hank Pym had planted a house on the lawn, too, but apparently it was just for him and Mrs. The Wasp. And Mr. Hawkeye and Mrs. Laura and Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel were living in a big fancy plane that had brought Mr. T'Challa and Mrs. Shuri and a bald lady with cool tattoos in it.

_And_ Auntie Natasha was just casually sleeping in a nest of blankets, near the kitchen, so she could eat snacks at night, she said. And Uncle Rhodey had moved in a spaceship with the blue lady with the robot arm, her green sister, and a racoon that slept in a big talking tree. And Doctor Strange and Mr. Fury were usually hanging around, but Morgan didn't know where they were sleeping. Or if they did sleep.

“Yeah, I don't know about that, either,” Tony agreed, dazzled. “And, where did you say Mom was, right now?”

“At the groceries. She said everyone eats a lot. Mr. Steve helps her cook, too. He makes the _best_ donuts. I didn't know you can make donuts at home,” she said with something akin to accusation, but it softened quickly. “I tried to keep one for you, but then I ate it. Sorry, Daddy. Oh -oh, I have to show you Goose!”

Tony agreed to meet Goose, who turned out to be Captain Marvel's secret orange cat. It wasn't long after he and Morgan were sitting on the floor, giving scratches to the little beast, that someone cleared their throat gently behind them. Natasha stood in the doorway, wearing an enormous black hoodie with blue stripes that was definitely not hers, but was not Tony's either.

“Hello Nat,” said Morgan with a happy smile. “Come sit with us!”

“I think you and your daddy deserve some time together, little swan,” Natasha said with a smile, her eyes moving to Tony's. “Happy and Peter are in the kitchen fighting about what you'd want to eat. I figured I'd get the facts from the source.”

She talked so casually, like Tony had really been gone for a simple nap, like she had been there all along. Like everything was alright and well.

“I trust them to come up with something good,” he said, looking at her, all skinny and fragile and human, the deadliest woman on Earth, the most talented spy alive, the silly clothes thieve who poked her tongue at Secretary Ross' back. Natasha. How he had taken her for granted, the immortal beast. How he had never imagined her jumping. How he had always known she would be the one to jump. Suddenly, he wanted to tell her -to say she was the best of them all, to say how she had been the glue to hold them together all this time, to say how he saw it and loved her. He didn't say it, but he looked at her, and he made himself smile as he said, “Morgan's right, come sit with us. Why a swan?”

“Nat's showed me ballet,” Morgan clarified excitedly.

“She's good at it, too,” Natasha said, smiling at Tony in a way that said, _I know_ , and _Sorry_ and _We're lucky, aren't we?_ all in one glance, and she sat and scratched the cat behind its ears. It purred lazily, eyes shut. “I'm amazed she's your daughter. Your dad _cannot_ dance,” she told Morgan on a serious tone.

“What? That's rude. I can dance. Remember the dinner with the mariachis? I showed you and Steve to look down at me.”

“Oh, I'm confident _everyone_ remembers that.”

Tony made a face, but Morgan wasn't paying attention anymore, trying to catch Goose's tail and releasing it as soon as she got it. She was mindful not to tug or squish too hard, and the cat seemed content to play along, wiggling his tail.

“I'm glad you're okay,” Tony said quietly, following the silent game.

“I'm glad we are,” Nat replied.

“I mean it. We -need you. You know that, yeah?”

She looked up, and she didn't reply immediately with any smartass comment, not with any snarky comeback. She looked up and Tony realised he had never known what color her eyes really were, when she wasn't wearing contacts. They were gray now, and he was enclined to thinking they were the real thing. She just looked at Tony, sitting in his house with an oversized hoodie and no lie around her, and she tilted her head forward, just a little.

Maybe it was a thank you, but Tony hoped it was a _I know_.

Then the world shook and a _scream_ tore through the night, startling all of them. Goose jumped to its paws, hissing, and Morgan grabbed at Tony's sleeve. Natasha's entire body tensed in high alert.

“What the hell,” she started and didn't finish, straightening up as the door slammed. She reached for something in the hoodie's pocket, not engaging yet, but placing herself in front of Morgan.

“Where is he?!” Shouted a raw voice, followed by the door creaking again, and a second voice, worried,

“What are you talking about? Don't yell in the house, Tony is resting-”

Tony gave a laugh, relieved. Yeah, the girl had no understanding of basic human health rules. He didn't mind, not in the slightest bit.

“I'm just here, Space Girl!”

Something crashed down. Furious footsteps crossed the hall, and Nebula appeared, her black eyes blown wide with shock. She paused for an instant and then crossed the distance separating them in the blink of an eye, throwing her long arms around his shoulders.

“I thought you gone,” she reproached before any other word, voice shaky and low. “Again.”

“I'm here,” Tony replied, and moved one step closer to complete the weird, unexperienced hug, and pat the shoulder of Nebula. “I'm right here.”

“You can't just drop the groceries like that! I think the eggs were in your bag. There won't be any celebratory cake if we- Oh my god, Tony!”

“Mom, look, Dad's awake!”

“Hey, Miss Potts. Miss me yet?”

Tony smiled at a paralysed Pepper over Nebula's shoulder, and he thought his friend, his best friend, his wife, was absolutely beautiful, her hair in a headband, with huge grocery bags in each hand and the voice of a mother. He winked, and she seemed to come out of her catatonia. Down went the bags and she joined them. Nebula moved aside with stiff movements, drying her eyes like she was angry at them, and allowed Pepper to place her hands on Tony's cheeks. She looked at him, like she was searching him for anything wrong.

“You should be so sorry,” she murmured.

“Too tired to be, but I'll make it up to you later. Hey, you,” Tony said as Morgan grabbed at one of his legs and one of Pepper's, joining in on the hug. “Did I hear something about cake?”

“We thought you wouldn't be ready to get out of bed before tomorrow,” Pepper replied, practical and eyes shining and her pink lips curled into a grin. “You ruined the surprise.”

“I think Loki ruined the surprise,” Natasha pointed out from where she stood, shielding Nebula from sight while she blew her nose in a kleenex she hadn't had an instant before. “He spent hours today doing his healing magic thing. I suspect Wanda helped too.”

“You just can't trust wizards,” Pepper said, but she failed at making reproaches that sounded convincing right now, with that smile on her beautiful face. “Welcome back, Mr. Stark.”

“We can talk to him now? Nobody said we could talk to him now!”

“I think this is a family thing, Harley- Harley!”

“So what? He's my dad, he's _your_ dad, Morgan's our sister. Hey, Mechanic!”

“Oh my god, Harley, you can't just -Mr. Stark, I'm sorry-”

“I'm sorry, am I being called the _dad_ of a boy who bought a flashy car with his mechanical engineering scholarship grand?”

Harley had gotten a haircut and a piercing in his eyebrow, that little disaster in the making. Peter was wearing a punny _Donut Give Up_ shirt and was looking like an anxious boy who didn't know yet if his report card had made it home. Pepper allowed them to take her place, and Morgan just climbed in Harley's arms with authority, not questioning the sister thing. She placed a big smooch on his cheek while he gave Tony an absolute smart-ass grin.

“Hey, little bean. It was relevant school material, Tony.”

“You come into my house, you braid my child's hair wrong, and you call me _Tony_?”

“I got you those blue cheese Doritos you wanted, Harley,” Pepper said, gently patting Peter's shoulder while he looked to be in growing distress.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Potts! What do I owe you?”

“Oh, don't worry about it.”

“ _Seriously?”_

“Shouldn't you still be in bed, Mr. Stark?” Peter jumped in, looking increasingly worried.

“I'm fine, kid. Why the long face? I thought you were one of the few who didn't sleep on the floor in this house.”

“Harley, why don't you go help set the table with Morgan, please?” Pepper interfered when Peter seemed at a loss for words. “There are extra chairs in the garage, Dumm-E will help you to them. Ms. Romanov, Nebula, will you help me with the groceries?”

Tony glanced at his wife as she gently diverted everyone away. She would have managed perfectly, yeah, he thought indistinctly. She would, indeed, have been okay. But her eyes, still, were red and a little tired under her always flawless make-up. He winked at her as she glanced over her shoulder. She seemed just a little bit more relaxed.

“I still can't really believe you're alive,” Peter said, looking broken down.

“I can't really believe you are, either,” Tony said, after a pause of a few uncomfortable instants. “Those were a few big days, kid. I'm feeling weird, too.”

“Well, that might be the magic thing,” Peter tried to smile. “Thor snapped you back to life, but it took all of Mr. Loki and Shuri -I mean, hum, princess Shuri?, and also Mr. Quill and Mr. Doctor Strange to work together to heal you, you know.”

“These guys kept me alive?”

“Don't laugh, Mr. Stark. We -we didn't think you were going to make it, at first. I didn't think... I really didn't think I would talk to you again.”

Tony wordlessly pulled him to his chest. Five years, he thought. Peter hadn't aged a day. Not him. Not Loki. Not Vision. Not Strange. A blink of an eye, for them, and they were back to a strange new world that had stubbornly refused to let them go. Peter made a small, kind of choked up sound and hid his face in Tony's shoulder. The weird pajama shoulder, actually.

“You're not crying in there, are you?” He asked in a breath.

“Of course not,” Peter said, voice broken.

“Good,” he said, and wiped at his eye with the back of his hand. “Come on, I need decent clothes. There are way too many people in my house that I don't want to see me in those grandpa pants.”

Peter nodded obligingly, and hurried to offer to help Tony find something adequate (Tony managed to chase some of that sad exhaustion from his eyes by telling him he didn't want one of his teenaged hipster t-shirts). He changed into... Well, a more decent set of pajamas. Jogging pants and a shirt, there.

By the time he moved to the kitchen, the room was buzzing with life -like, so much life. There were people in there that Tony didn't even recognise: an infinitely old man with aviator glasses swapping war stories with an amused Bucky Barnes, a man clad in a red suit and mask who tapped the chair next to him to ask Peter to sit by his side. Steve and Thor were placing super sized bottles of ketchup and mustards all around the table, while Clint was helping his youngest child into a baby seat. Sam Wilson brought in a gigantic bowl of french fries and Rhodey poked his head through the door to ask how many cheeseburgers everyone wanted. Then Happy came in too to tell Valkyrie that she could eat her first dozen and _then_ ask for more, thank you.

There was no way to seat everyone at the small mahogany table Pepper had chosen for a maximum of six, when her parents came to visit. There was no way to seat, like, a sixth of the people that were there. But for some reason, they made it work. Wanda sat on Vision's lap. Loki stood at the door, leaning against the wall and looking like he didn't care, except he was eating a cheeseburger filled with bacon and mayo. Groot made a bench out of himself where Mantis chatted with Hope and Valkyrie flirted with Carol. Okoye looked at the pickles in her own burger like even that was better at home.

Thor had been sitting. He stood the instant Tony walked in, offering him a chair, which was fair, because, hey, this was his home. He thanked the big guy, still, amused to see that Loki had apparently changed his burger to a sad lettuce and tomato sandwich. Morgan was seated on his right and the racoon guy on his left. Strange was helping Lila Barton fill her plates with fries. And Steve, god bless his little heart, was sitting on the opposite site of the table, and watched until everyone had something in their plate before he tapped his fork on his glass to ask for attention, like he was at a garden party with the Queen.

“Attention everyone,” he asked, standing. “I would like to propose a toast.”

“ _Please_ , Cap, tell me this is the moment when you make a speech about my undying heroism,” Tony said, very, very much hoping this wasn't it. Could he pretend to pass out back to sleep if Steve didn't get a hint?

His teammate just smiled, though, a charming little smile like he had had when he pointed out that _he,_ Captain Hydra, was a much better liar than Howard Potts, and lifted his glass. His eyes told Tony the speech had definitely been happening, and he was just being kind to an old tired man.

“A toast to Earth,” Cap simply said, “to our friends, and to us all.”

“I'll drink to that,” Tony said, lifting his glass of water up, and as if they had all waited after him, everybody else found some drink and lifted it up in a chorus of _cheers!_ and _I am Groot_ and _aye!_ and _to us all!_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Since Endgame, more than ever before, I feed on hazelnut chocolate and comments.


End file.
